V’s 52 Pick-up | 02

Here is the second card in my 52 Pick-up project. Once again, I picked a card at random and it has served me well. Here are the words of the poem that I chose to illustrate. Unfortunately, the ink smudged a little.

The “heap of broken images” really appeals to me because I am using these vintage photographs that no one else wants to use or that no one from the family of those in these images cherishes anymore.

Here is the face of the card:

This woman looks slightly unhappy with having three children in her lap. Her story intrigues me. Visually, I wanted the branches to be overbearing and oppressive. The roots emanate from the bottom of the image, I made them different earthy tones but also red as the color of the heart.

In choosing this photo I was greatly influenced by having finished Charles Dickens’s biography. Sometimes it is better not to know too much about people you admire. Dickens had 10 living children by his wife Catherine who was systematically pregnant year after year after year. And after 15 years he decided that she had grown fat, was never his intellectual equal and discarded her for an 18 year-old actress. Worse, he took great pains to publicly humiliate his wife as a way to justify his separation.

Before she died, Catherine gave all of the love letters Dickens had sent her to her daughter Katey, stating that they were “proof that he did love me once”. Broke my heart.